


Restraint - Deleted Scenes

by DarkEmeralds



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Regency, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-28
Updated: 2010-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-08 09:38:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkEmeralds/pseuds/DarkEmeralds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At 42 chapters and more than 200,000 words, one would be wrong to say that <i>Restraint</i> is not long enough; however, a good many interesting things happened to the Honourable Mr Tristan Jarrett and his acquaintance at school, and later at Cambridge and in London, and it seemed a great pity to bury them forever in obscurity; I therefore take the liberty to offer them for the amusement of such readers as may find enjoyment in them during the long interval between the posting of one chapter and the next of the main body of the work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Deleted Scenes: Prologue - In Which Tristan Jarrett's Reputation Precedes Him

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vampirefan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampirefan/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Restraint](https://archiveofourown.org/works/61002) by [DarkEmeralds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkEmeralds/pseuds/DarkEmeralds). 



_Winchester, September, 1811_

The Honourable Mr Tristan Jarrett came down to breakfast on his first day at Winchester College in a state of some disarray. His gown was undone, his long hair uncombed under the cap that sat askew upon his head, his eyes bleary. An unseasonable late summer rain spattered against the tall, narrow windows, and the room was chilly and a bit damp, despite the fire that was burning in the large hearth.

Many of the boys had a sleepy air, the school-day at Winchester College beginning quite early. Some were stoically eating; a few of the youngest played and laughed. It was not the first day of term, for Mr. Jarrett had arrived at his new school a week late, and so everyone in the room had the advantage of him. He took a deep breath, looked about him, and boldly selected a place in the middle of one of the long tables, between two other boys of about his age.

One of his breakfast-table companions, a ginger-haired youth with a round face set in a comically glum expression, glanced up without lifting his cheek from its resting place upon his hand. "New boy?" he asked.

Tristan nodded. "Jarrett," he said, and sat.

The ginger-haired boy raised his head at that and gave Tristan an interested look. "I've heard of you," he said. "Sent down from Harrow."

"Eton as well," Tristan said. It was not strictly true that he had been expelled from either of these schools, but the look of respect that crossed the other boy's face gave Tristan some reason to let the misapprehension go uncorrected.

"Well, you look like the very devil," the boy said, scanning Tristan's face intently with every appearance of sympathy. "It is always hard to sleep the first night at school."

Tristan, who would have chosen death over admitting that, at the age of sixteen, he had shed even a single tear in the night to find himself once again alone so very far from home, shrugged with as much indifference as he could muster. The ginger-haired boy, who looked as much at home as if he owned the dining-hall, nevertheless seemed to understand this, and Tristan made an effort to smile at him.

"Wheaton," the boy said, holding out his hand. Tristan hesitated for only a moment, then shook it.

***

By the close of his second day at Winchester College, the Honourable Mr Tristan Jarrett found himself in possession of one friend and half a dozen admirers. Wheaton proved his friend by taking upon himself Mr Jarrett's education in what was most important: whom to avoid ("You will wish to keep well to the leeward of Professor Milford"), whom to cultivate ("I shall, of course, be the most useful and amusing of your acquaintance here, but Gilbert will probably ride with you, and Dauncey's your man if you need help with the dead languages") where to go for privacy ("I have found the stables sometimes useful when I have wanted a bit of peace"), when and how to escape the college grounds for a jaunt into the town, at what o'clock the cook might provide a hungry sixteen-year-old boy an extra plate of food, and which of the maidservants were friendliest (here Mr Wheaton gave Mr Jarrett a knowing elbow to the ribs).

Jarrett's admirers were younger boys. One or two of them were impressed with Jarrett's wealth, with the horse he was allowed to keep in the stables, with his height or the athletic prowess he demonstrated as he threw himself into sculling. But more of them seemed drawn to him by the reputation which had preceded him to Winchester.

Rumours of Jarrett's expulsion from both Eton and Harrow had by this second day made their way to nearly every ear. Winchester College seemed to embrace a boy rejected by England's greater public schools, deeming the evils that had made him unacceptable to those institutions--whatever those evils might have been--a cause for celebration here. Want of wit not being among the charges laid to his account, Jarrett did nothing to correct the other boys' misapprehensions. By this simple omission, Tristan Jarrett very soon found himself to be the subject of celebrity.

On his third day in his new school, Jarrett attended his first geography lesson under the tutelage of Professor Milford. Jarrett entered the classroom a little earlier than most of the other boys. The professor looked up from where he stood perusing a book upon a lectern, and in the space of a moment, Jarrett understood why Wheaton had warned him to avoid the notice of this man. His gaze seemed to take Jarrett in from head to foot. His eyes, in their travel over Jarrett's person, lingered where they should not. He did not smile--not precisely--but his expression became avid.

Another boy entered the classroom at just that moment, and Jarrett was reprieved. Throughout the lesson, Jarrett kept his eyes down and would not have spoken except that Professor Milford made a point of addressing him directly more often than he did other boys. Some of these cast looks in his direction that told him they did not like his usurpation of Professor Milford's esteem. Tristan Jarrett could think of nothing he wanted less.

***

"What really happened?" Wheaton asked him on the fourth day. They had escaped the college precincts following their Latin class, and were walking along St James' Lane, their gowns carelessly bundled under their arms. It was a fine September day. There was dust in the air and the hint of autumn drawing near.

"What really happened when?"

"What really happened to cause your expulsion from Eton?"

Jarrett shrugged. A memory, indistinct and strangely both still and silent, as of a moment frozen, came unbidden and greatly unwanted to Jarrett's mind: David's face, tense and livid with anger, his hand tugging harshly at Tristan's arm, a sickening sensation of feeling cold, exposed...and the harsh, overwrought face of Professor Wickersham. Jarrett pushed the image away. "I was only eleven," he said after a moment. "My brother David--he's six years older than I am, you see--wished me out of the school."

"Whatever for? I know you could not have been better at Latin than he was, for I have just sat through a Latin class with you and you have none."

Jarrett gave an affronted gasp. "My Latin is well enough!" he cried.

"Indeed? I'll wager a guinea that you cannot say that in Latin."

Tristan thought for a moment, then said,  _Glubes magnanimi Remi nepotes._"

Wheaton stared at him. He patted several pockets and silently withdrew a coin, which he proffered to Jarrett. "You did not win the wager, but here--you have amazed me."

Jarrett snickered and took the coin.

"And, by the bye," Wheaton added, "I do nothing of the kind! I have never even been to Italy. But I now suspect that you were expelled from your other schools for reciting scandalous Latin poetry."

"If spouting improper Latin verse were cause for removal from Eton and Harrow, then I daresay the only boys left in those places would be the ones too stupid to learn any Latin at all."

"I imagine that's so."

Together, they turned into the St Cross Road, the cathedral looming before them, its magnificent facade golden in the afternoon light. Jarrett was not yet so jaded as to view one of Britain's finest churches with indifference, and looked at it now with an interest that he hoped would dissuade Mr. Wheaton from pursuing his line of questioning. But Wheaton, he was fast discovering, did not lightly let an interesting story go.

"Why then," Wheaton asked, "were you removed?"

"I believe you would find, if you could examine a record of events," Jarrett said, trying for an insouciant air, and trading upon his growing reputation as a libertine in the making, "that I was deemed a corrupting influence."

"Really?" Wheaton sounded very interested. "Forgive me, Jarrett, but I have a brother who is eleven years old, and he is incapable of corrupting anything but the pillow he drools on all night long. What corruption is an eleven year old boy capable of? Did you teach another boy to set fire to the library? Did you conduct Satanic rituals as taught you by the old crone who lives in the wild hills above Lake Windermere?"

Jarrett could not but laugh. Wheaton's flights of fancy seemed to place Jarrett's own sense of shame in perspective. "Satanic rituals! There is an idea!" he said. "But no. None of those things. It was...it was simply the wish of my brother that I be withdrawn from the school."

"I beg your pardon, Jarrett, for I do not mean to pry."

"I think you really do," Jarrett replied without rancour. "I begin to believe that prying is very much in your nature."

Wheaton rubbed his nose and looked down. "Well, you are right. I am fascinated by people and their...their reasons. I am interested in why people behave as they do. And I talk too much. I know I do. It is a fault."

They paused in their sauntering walk and stepped back from the road as a carriage rolled by, harness jingling and wheels throwing up dust. When it had passed, Wheaton said, "Well, I have pried quite enough, even for me. Forgive me if I have distressed you. I must bear in mind that when cornered in the wild, the Jarrett-beast will burst into Catullus."

Jarrett laughed again.

"Here," Wheaton said, indicating a pleasant-looking establishment whose door gave onto St Cross Road. The fresh paint, the large and sparkling many-paned window, and the bright sign that jutted out from the building upon an iron rod, declared the place to be modern and new. The sign bore an image of a lithe, leaping creature with curving horns.

"This is a public-house," Jarrett said, turning to look at Wheaton, his eyebrows raised.

"Very astute."

"I have never been in a public-house. I am sure my father would disapprove."

Wheaton smiled and held the door open for him. They went inside.


	2. Deleted Scenes: Prologue - In Which The Honourable Mr Jarrett Strikes the Oak

_Winchester, October, 1811_

Mr. Jarrett found that the bright glare into which rumour and gossip had cast him on his arrival at Winchester dimmed somewhat as the days passed. He went about with Wheaton, whose family had sent its sons to Winchester College for generations and was very respectable; Jarrett was, moreover, carefully indifferent to his studies, and he avoided the notice of his tutors and professors. He was particularly assiduous in his attempts to be invisible to Professor Milford, making himself unkempt, trying always to arrive in the classroom and quit it in the midst of a group of boys; he wrote out his lessons in a mediocre fashion neither poor enough to merit censure nor good enough to merit praise. Milford, to Jarrett's relief, seemed to lose interest in him.

He ate prodigiously and had pains at night in his legs; during the day he was aware of a riotousness in his body that would not be quelled by any amount of sculling or riding or walking about the college or the town. When Wheaton intimated that he enjoyed assignations with Rosie, one of the kitchen-maids, Jarrett wondered if he should seek something of the kind for himself. He had very little experience of the fairer sex apart from Lizzie Lankford, whose family's lands marched with Barringford's in Cumberland, and she had been, until the last two years, more of a wild playfellow than a young lady. There were female servants, of course, at Barringford House, some of whom had begun to cast certain looks at young Mr. Tristan in recent months, but he had never done more than smile back at them.

One autumn afternoon, Mr. Jarrett was thinking about what Wheaton had told him: that if one were kind to the girls, and brought them little things, and asked them about themselves, they would be perfectly willing to kiss a fellow. Bored and restless and unable to study, he was just quitting the library with some action in mind along these lines. Wheaton was abroad somewhere, indulging one or other of his passions--for people's stories, for Rosie's kisses, or for the freedom of the streets of Winchester. There were two hours before dinner, the day was fine, and the sounds of shouting and play came in from the field outside. Jarrett was sure he was the only pupil still in the library, when he remarked another boy sitting at a table, his head bent over a copy of the Poetics, his lips moving and a finger sliding across the page as he read.

Jarrett knew him by sight from geography lessons, but had never spoken to him. He was not a handsome boy, his nose being a little too large, his frame a little too thin and his overall appearance rather stork-like. But the afternoon sun streamed in at the window, outlining him brightly and somehow catching and revealing what was handsome in him: a well-formed hand, long lashes, and an abundance of thick, straight, nearly-black hair.

The boy did not look up when Mr Jarrett came upon him. He did not leave off reading when Mr Jarrett walked past the table he occupied. Even when Mr Jarrett paused before the table and made as if to read upside-down the Greek that the boy was reading in the usual direction, the other boy gave no sign that he knew Jarrett was there. Jarrett realised that he was being ignored in favour of Aristotle, a circumstance unprecedented in his experience.

"I am Jarrett," he said. "Who the devil are you?"

The boy looked up at last. His eyes were blue. He scowled and said, "Go away."

Somewhat stunned, Jarrett went away.

***

In the dining hall two or three evenings later, Wheaton, in reaching across Jarrett for a bread-roll, glanced at Jarrett's face and exclaimed, "How you glare at Dauncey! Has he offended you in some particular?"

Jarrett slowly took his gaze from the next table, where the dark-haired boy sat. "He offends me generally," he replied.

Wheaton looked at him shrewdly. "Can it be," he ventured, "that the Honourable Mr Tristan Jarrett, son of an earl, scion of one of England's noblest and most ancient families, has met with indifference?" Wheaton feigned astonishment. "Is it possible that a boy upon whom nature has bestowed height, and a handsome face, and wits, and, as if that were not enough, an enviable athletic prowess, has not yet won over every boy in the school?" Wheaton gesticulated broadly, his face a comic mask of incredulity.

Jarrett was discovering that Wheaton's insights frequently struck very close to the mark. He said, "Certainly not, Wheaton. Why, look at him! He reads Greek even at dinner!"

"Terribly offensive, I agree."

Jarrett continued to glare at the dark-haired boy, whose attention remained unwaveringly upon his book.

"I can arrange an introduction, if you like. Henry Dauncey. Second son of the Sussex Daunceys of ancient name--came over with the Conqueror, so they say. Poor as church-mice for generations until Grandpapa Dauncey married Miss Annabella Pierce and her East India Company fortune. Dauncey has two sisters, I believe, both as yet unmarried."

"You are an old woman, Wheaton."

Wheaton looked affronted. "I inform you, merely--in case you wish to ask his papa for permission to pay your addresses."

Jarrett flung a bread roll at Wheaton's head. Wheaton raised an eyebrow and said, "To one of the sisters! Dauncey has been here as long as I have. I know no particular ill of him. He is studious, to be sure, and while that is a terrible fault, and one that you and I are not guilty of, it makes him worthy of your pity, Jarrett, not your rancour."

Jarrett said, "Do shut up, Wheaton."

Wheaton shrugged and muttered, "Only trying to help, man."

***

In the days that followed, Mr Jarrett made a point of being always just quitting the place Mr Dauncey was coming to. He waited in the library until Dauncey's inevitable appearance, and then left forthwith. He got up from the dinner table as Dauncey sat down (necessitating more than one late foray to the kitchens with Wheaton to beg Rosie for a plate of cold mutton and mustard to prevent his starving overnight).

He copied out a poem of Catullus, and let it fall in the corridor outside of the chapel, where Dauncey, whose Latin was excellent, was sure to find it and blush at the lascivious stanzas written there in Jarrett's own hand.

Upon an afternoon in October, Jarrett and Wheaton were walking together along the cloister, their footsteps and voices echoing from the stone wall, when Mr. Dauncey emerged from a door before them. He looked at them with every appearance of a startled bird, then turned upon his heel and went away quickly in the opposite direction.

"Now what have you done, Jarrett?" Wheaton asked him. "Dauncey is avoiding us."

"Yes, so it would seem," Jarrett answered, watching Dauncey's retreating back. His gown billowed out behind him in a light breeze as he hurried off across the quadrangle. Jarrett was rather pleased than not, for Dauncey had looked quite annoyed, and his annoyance was an improvement upon his former indifference.

"Did you frighten him?"

"How would I frighten Henry Dauncey?" Jarrett countered.

Wheaton looked at him speculatively. "Well, you do not frighten me, and I am known to be quite timid," he said. "I do not say that you are not fearsome! Do not misunderstand me. I am sure that if you were to cast one of your supercilious glares at an unsuspecting commoner, it would quite unman the poor fellow. Perhaps it is merely that there is nothing in me that is naturally the prey of what is frightening in you."

"What the devil are you talking about, Wheaton?" Jarrett said sharply.

"Sometimes I am not certain myself." Wheaton paused to tie his shoe, throwing his books to the stone walkway. "But the question remains: what have you done to cause Dauncey to flee?"

"I have done nothing. I avoid him at every turn."

Wheaton retrieved his books and straightened again. "You have singled him out, then, for you avoid no one else particularly, so far as I have observed."

"If you say so, Wheaton."

***

Jarrett let himself into the geography classroom as quietly as possible. His efforts to be invisible to Professor Milford had borne fruit: Milford had seemed to shift his attention elsewhere, and in the ensuing weeks, Jarrett had grown careless. Now he was ten minutes late.

"Mr. Jarrett. You are tardy."

"Yes. I beg your pardon."

"Mr. Jarrett, at Winchester College, pupils address their teachers as 'sir.' It does not matter whether these pupils be the sons of gentleman farmers or the sons of earls. Do I make myself clear, Jarrett?"

Jarrett felt rage rise within. He was weary of hiding and being afraid. "Oh, certainly," he replied, looking at Professor Milford. "Sir," he added after a pause. He could not have said later what made him do it, for he knew without the smallest doubt that showing impertinence would only undo all of his efforts so far.

Snickers arose from several quarters around him in the classroom. A covert glance revealed Dauncey to be not among their number, his face to be set in an expression of pity, as if he thought Jarrett very stupid, and viewed with horror the likely consequences of that stupidity.

As Jarrett moved toward his seat, Professor Milford said, "Jarrett, you will stay after class."

Jarrett's rage evaporated, to be replaced by a miserable remorse. He took his place, and as the geography lesson he had interrupted got underway again, he stared at his book, unseeing, unhearing, bitter with himself for what he had done. When at last he looked up, Milford was gazing at him with a slight, satisfied smile. Jarrett felt his his heart grow cold.

***

Tristan slammed the door of Milford's classroom in the dimming light of late afternoon and ran along the corridor, down the stairs, and out into the cloister. He looked wildly about him. The quadrangle was empty, most of the boys having gone in for dinner. Breathing hard, he leaned against the great oak in the quadrangle. At once burning with shame and seething with anger, he could only stand there, his hands splayed against the huge bole behind his back, his hair catching on the rough bark.

"Damn him!" he muttered. "Damn him to the very depths of hell!" He could feel Milford's hand still upon his back, smell his stale breath, see his flaring nostrils as he leaned too close and spoke of Tristan's wickedness. Such was Tristan's anguish that he was unable to do anything but draw deep, painful breaths and pray to be spared from weeping.

He turned his face to the tree, struck his palms stingingly upon it, his elbows locked against shaking, and let his head fall between his arms. He could not rid himself of the sensation of Milford's hand straying lower, his voice saying shocking things, things Jarrett had never heard before, as that hateful hand discovered what Tristan could not prevent his traitorous body from exhibiting. Horrified out of his frozen shame and into action, Tristan had simply run.

As his thoughts now slowly settled, and as the sharp immediacy of the terrible moment gradually blunted itself into a flat sense of shame, the Honourable Mr. Tristan Jarrett gave an inarticulate shout and drove his right fist against the tree.

He did not become conscious of the pain until he was in the corridor outside his dormitory. Wheaton was just arriving from the opposite direction and approached him with his usual ironic smile. This faded instantly as they met before the dormitory door, and his whole face went from humorous to anxious. "Good God, Jarrett! What has happened to you?"

Jarrett felt incapable of speech. He only shook his head. Wheaton's eyes strayed from Jarrett's face to his hand. "And your knuckles! What did you do?"

Jarrett looked down at his right hand. The knuckles were bloody, and the hand, which ached terribly, was beginning to swell. "I--believe I struck the oak in the quadrangle," he told Wheaton. He leaned heavily against the wall and slid down it to sit listlessly upon the cold sone floor.

"The oak--? Did it--?" Wheaton seemed to stop himself with difficulty from making some quip. "You look very bad. Please, Jarrett--what has happened?" he asked for the third time.

"Milford..." Jarrett began, but found he could not continue. Wheaton muttered something darkly under his breath, and Jarrett caught only the word "monster".

One of the younger boys emerged just then from the dormitory and Jarrett closed his lips. "Come," Wheaton said, offering Jarrett a hand up. "Let us go down to the kitchen and see if Mrs. Wiggins cannot put something on that hand."

"Yes." Jarrett felt strangely dazed. He followed Wheaton along the corridor, and down the back stair, three flights, to the kitchens. Mrs. Wiggins, the housekeeper who ruled over the servants of Winchester College, was writing figures in a large ledger when Wheaton pushed through the doors, Jarrett behind him.

"Pardon us, Mrs. Wiggins," Wheaton began. "Jarrett here has injured his hand. I wonder, could you help us clean the wound?"

She put her pen down and rose from her table with a grunt of stiffness. "It looks to me like you was set upon by a brick wall."

"The oak in the quad," Wheaton supplied. Jarrett was grateful, for he still did not wish to speak.

"Ah. I see," Mrs. Wiggins said. She inspected Jarrett's limply-proffered hand. "It does not seem to be broken, bless us. What were you thinking, young man? What did that oak tree ever do to you?" She clucked and shook her head and bustled off to a cupboard. Looking over her shoulder and finding both boys still standing idly, she said, "Well, Mr. Wheaton? Sit him down and fetch the basin! What are you waiting for, sir?"

Wheaton nudged Jarrett to one of the chairs around the servants' dining table. Jarrett sat. A china basin appeared in front of him as he stared at the grain of the wood. He wondered absurdly if they used sand to scrub it; he had seen the scullery maid scrubbing the table with sand at Barringford House when he had once wandered into the servants' area belowstairs. It seemed a very long time ago.

After a moment, Mrs. Wiggins poured hot water from a heavy kettle into the basin. She dipped a clean cloth into the water and, still sighing and clicking her tongue and muttering, "Lord bless us" and "Heavenly days!", took Jarrett's hand and began dabbing carefully at his bloodied knuckles. It stung, but Jarrett did not flinch at the pain.

"You are not the first young gentleman to come to blows with that tree," she said. Jarrett let her words wash over him, trying not to think of Milford. "And none of 'em ever did so without he was sorely provoked."

Wheaton said, "Professor Milford kept him after class." Jarrett flinched at that.

"I see," Mrs. Wiggins said in dark tones. "Mr. Wheaton, you run along back to the dormitory now. I will see to Mr. Jarrett here."

"Jarrett?" Wheaton said.

"Go. Go along--thank you. I will be fine here."

Wheaton left with a solicitous backward look, and Mrs. Wiggins dipped her cloth once again into the warm water. "You're the Earl of Barringford's son, ain't you? The Honourable Mr. Tristan Jarrett."

He nodded.

"Well, Mr. Tristan, I've two boys of my own. Grown now, they are, bless 'em, and with families of their own, but when they were your age, I would not have left either one of them alone with Professor Milford."

Jarrett raised his eyes to her face. She was intent upon her ministrations and by all appearances was speaking idly, as thoughts struck her. Her faded blond hair was braided and coiled under her cap. Her cap was very white, Jarrett noticed.

"I've seen many a lad--begging your pardon, many a young gentleman--come and go from this school, and you are just the sort of boy Professor Milford, or another like him, takes to. You cannot help looking as you do."

Her words struck like a terrible blow to his chest, and Tristan felt his face crumpling. He knew that there was something about his person that caused his difficulties. He knew it because he could still remember Wickersham touching him and saying, "Wicked child. So beautiful," and David's enraged face as he had torn his brother away and marched him off, never to return to Eton. Tristan had looked long and hard in the mirror and could not tell what this thing was. He saw only his own face, not nearly as handsome as David's, and his own narrow frame, neither good nor bad, but simply as he was.

Now he was older and his body sought to betray him at every turn, and Milford had known it, and had--

"I--I do not think I am wicked," Tristan managed to say to Mrs. Wiggins before his throat closed.

"What? Do not be silly. You're a boy! Boys have a bit of mischief in them, but I have known very few wicked ones, and you, young sir, are not among them." She put the cloth, now spotted with blood, into the basin and carried it away. Tristan struggled against the humiliating stinging in his eyes, longing to ask her how she knew, how she could be sure. When she returned, she had a strip of white linen and a jar of ointment. She sat in the chair next to his. "How old are you?"

"Sixteen." Tristan surreptitiously wiped his eyes with the back of his uninjured left hand.

"Well, it will soon be over. The Milfords of this world will no longer regard you." She dabbed some ointment over his knuckles, which seemed to have stopped bleeding, and began wrapping his hand with the bandage strip.

"What is it about me?" he burst out. Instantly, he wished the words back in, horrified and ashamed.

Mrs. Wiggins sighed. "You are a handsome lad. You draw the eye. And no one is watching over you. That is all."

Tristan turned his face away from her as best he could, staring again at the grain of the table-top. The constriction in his throat and chest were such as to prevent his drawing breath, and yet he knew that as soon as he could breathe again, he would no longer be able to keep tears from his eyes, and so he held himself tightly restrained.

"You heed my words, sir." She bent her head to catch his downcast eyes, and he looked at her. "It is not your doing, and not your fault." She tied a knot in the linen and went on holding his hand lightly in both of hers, there on the scrubbed planks of the servants' table.

"I've seen it too often," she said. Her voice grew more heated. "Oh, had I the running of this school...well!" She shook her head. "I do not. Alas, I do not. The likes of Professor Milford can scent out a boy who has lived on a beggar's portion of affection, and is starving for want of attention. You mind where you seek it. You are sixteen years old, practically a man. You must not let anyone decide for you any more. Do you understand me?"

Tristan looked at her for a long moment. Some of the shame seemed to drain from his overwrought nerves. He thought he could see the scene of his humiliation differently now: he had had the strength to leave Milford's classroom, to deny his unseemly attentions, even if belatedly. Tristan's throat loosed slightly, and the iron bands around his chest gave way. He took a shaking breath and nodded.

"Good! Are you hungry?"

Somewhat to his own surprise, Tristan found that he was. "Yes. Very," he said.

"Then stay a moment and I will see what I can find in the pantry."

"Thank you Mrs. Wiggins."

Tristan returned to the dormitory an hour later, having supped at the servants' table with Mrs. Wiggins fussing over him and insisting that he drink a cup of tea to steady his nerves. Most of the boys were in bed, and the room was dark. He walked softly across the dormitory, his white linen bandage clearly visible in the moonlight that came in at the window.

"I say, Jarrett! I heard that you hurt your hand by striking Professor Milford!"

It was Urquhart, one of his younger admirers, a boy of fourteen from Edinburgh, even farther from home than Jarrett was himself. Several of the other boys were sitting up in bed now. Jarrett glanced over at Wheaton's bed. Wheaton was, apparently, asleep.

"Tomorrow in your geography lesson," he said to Urquhart, "if you observe a large bruise upon Professor Milford's jaw, you will know whether that rumour is true."

"But what if you struck him below his neck?" another of the boys asked.

Jarrett replied, "Chadwicke, you must ask yourself what blow I could strike Professor Milford that would damage my hand, and be hidden by ordinary clothes." Jarrett heard a small, appreciative laugh from the direction of Wheaton's bed. He undressed and got into his own bed.

Another young voice said, tentatively, "You might have struck him in the knee."

Wheaton laughed out loud.

Jarrett turned his back to the room and was soon fast asleep.


	3. Deleted Scenes: Prologue - In Which Tristan Jarrett Forms an Attachment

_Winchester, October 1811 to January 1812_

Mr Jarrett sat astride the lowest branch of the very oak upon which he had injured his hand three days earlier. Henry Dauncey was approaching from the cloister. The late October air was thick with the promise of rain, but none was yet falling. Jarrett leapt down from the branch, his unbuttoned college gown billowing out around him, his overlong hair falling into his face.

Jarrett's sudden appearance before him, as it were from above, clearly startled Dauncey out of his introspection. "Jarrett," Mr Dauncey said. "Good God. What is it? I am late for Greek."

Mr Jarrett noted the red cheeks and breathless air of the usually composed Mr Dauncey. "I shall walk with you," he said.

"Are you not late for a class as well?"

"It makes no difference." Jarrett matched his stride to Dauncey's.

"It would appear to make a difference to Professor Milford."

"Professor Milford may go to the devil."

Dauncey looked at him with something like respect for the first time, and Jarrett wondered if he, too, had been detained after class at some point. Dauncey was already seventeen years old, and, according to Mrs. Wiggins, this meant that any difficulties Dauncey might have had with Milford were now at an end. He longed to ask, but found that he could not bring himself to do so. Instead, he had the notion to part company with Dauncey while that expression of approbation still lingered on his features.

"Well, good-bye," he said. "I suppose I must go learn _something_."

"Good-bye," Dauncey said, looking puzzled, as Jarrett gathered his gown about him and hurried off.

***

The life of the Honourable Mr. Tristan Jarrett became more tolerable at Winchester College as the term went on. Many of the boys remained persuaded that Jarrett had, indeed, struck Professor Milford, despite all rational evidence to the contrary. He could not but observe that the less he said, the more the other boys seemed to respect him, and that allowing others to think what they pleased of him was rather beneficial than not.

The public house under the sign of the leaping creature became the regular haunt of Messrs Jarrett and Wheaton. "What is it?" Wheaton would ask of the figure painted on the wordless sign.

"It is a hart. I have told you," Jarrett replied on several occasions.

"That is no hart," Wheaton would argue. "But nor is it a stag. I have it! Perhaps it is an antelope!"

They had finally asked the publican, who said it was a creature found only in deepest Africa, espied by Mr. Mungo Park in his explorations of that perilous continent and described in his writings. The creature had an exotic name which neither boy could properly remember, and so they ended by referring to the place as the Gazelle.

***

It was near All Saints when Henry Dauncey went from avoiding Jarrett to seeking him out. Jarrett was walking up the hill from the Itchen, sweating freely in the chilly air from a rigorous sculling race which he had won, and was astonished to see Dauncey step away from a tree, where he had clearly been waiting, and approach.

"I beg your pardon, Jarrett," Dauncey said, far more politely than he had ever said anything to Jarrett before. "I wonder if I might have a word with you."

"Certainly, if you wish it." Dauncey fell into step with him, but did not immediately say more. After they had covered most of the ground between the river and the school, Jarrett said, "Well? What it is you wish to talk to me about?"

Dauncey looked over his shoulder. "I--could we--? That is, what I want to ask you about is not for other ears."

Dauncey's face bore a determined air, clearly signalling his intent to speak of what was difficult. "Very well," Jarrett told him. "I must see to my horse. Come with me." As the November air began to chill Jarrett's sweat-dampened skin, they made their way to the stables. Inside, the air was still, and warm from the bodies of the animals, smelling of hay and horse and oats, a smell that put Jarrett very much at his ease. He nodded to the groom who was polishing harness, and heard the distinctive whicker of his own horse, Queen Mab. He went to her, Dauncey following in his wake.

"She is a very tall horse," Dauncey said.

"Yes, she is. My brother made me a gift of her before I came to school here." Jarrett stroked Queen Mab's dappled nose and fetched a handful of oats from a bucket hung high on the wall outside her stall. Her hot breath and soft lips filled the cupped palm of his hand, and he smiled. After a moment, he turned to Dauncey. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Professor Milford."

Jarrett carefully wiped his hand upon his breeches. "Professor Milford," he said, investing the name with all the scorn his voice could command, "is a licentious and depraved person who should not be allowed near a school." It was not until the words were out that he realised that they were not his own. He had heard them, long ago, spoken in his brother's voice, about Professor Wickersham. Remembering them now, discovering them to be true, gave Jarrett more heart than he had felt since his hour with Mrs. Wiggins in the servants' area.

Dauncey stared at him, his blue eyes wide. After a moment, he managed to utter a few words which, while not forming a complete sentence, conveyed their meaning readily enough to Jarrett. "Did he--that is, did he attempt to...?" Dauncey could say no more.

"He tried to make me his catamite," Jarrett said. "At least, I believe that was his intent." His face burned as he said it, but it felt strangely powerful to speak what he now realised was the simple truth. Dauncey looked down and nodded, his lips parted and moving slightly, as if trying what words to say next.

"Did you--were you--?"

It seemed very important to understand Dauncey's question before responding. Jarrett waited. In a rush, Dauncey said, "Did you...respond in any way?"

For a moment, Jarrett was tempted to lie, to pretend that he had not the slightest idea of Mr Dauncey's meaning. But he found that he could not be so callous in the face of Dauncey's apparent anguish. At last he replied, as truthfully as he knew how, "My body did. I did not intend it."

Dauncey looked up at him then, a degree of relief and gratitude in his eyes that Jarrett felt quite unworthy of. "You--you could not prevent it, then?"

Jarrett had given a great deal of thought to this very question, and it was still unsettled in his mind. Had Milford's touch, his approach, in any way pleased or gratified his senses? He could honestly answer that it had not, that every feeling revolted at the idea, that Milford's attention was utterly unwanted. And yet Jarrett wondered if he could have exercised some restraint that he had failed to find in that moment. To Dauncey he said merely, "It seemed I could not. One--one is provoked easily into an unwanted state. I do not believe it is a failing--or if it is, it would appear to be one shared by other boys."

Dauncey gave a nervous laugh and looked down again, blushing fiercely. Something in his gesture gave Jarrett a sensation of warmth, almost of affection, for this ungainly and studious schoolfellow, and he found his body stirring in response. He turned away and made to stroke Queen Mab's nose again.

"I must go," Dauncey said, looking suddenly very troubled. He turned and strode off, nearly running. Jarrett looked after him for a moment, then down at himself to discover if his state was observable to another, for it certainly felt extremely evident to his own senses, and decided that it probably was, but only if that other person were looking.

***

"What have you there, Jarrett?" Wheaton asked as Mr. Jarrett joined him in the dining hall. "Has someone sent you a picture?"

Jarrett looked up from his perusal of his brother's letter. "It is a drawing of Ravensworth," Mr. Jarrett explained. He took his customary place next to Wheaton and handed him the sheet he had been looking at. "See--it is a plan. That is my brother's house in Cumberland. It is very old, and no-one has lived in it for, oh, more than twenty years. David wants to repair it."

Mr. Wheaton cast his eye over the plan and said, "Is it haunted?"

Mr. Jarrett laughed and shook his head. "What an idea you must have of Cumberland, Wheaton! Witches with their satanic rites in the hills, and a haunted mansion from the days of Queen Elizabeth!"

"So, it is not so much haunted as...merely falling down?"

"I am sorry to disappoint you. Yes, that is it. At any rate, my brother is a bit mad over the place. He wants to improve it."

"Drains?" Wheaton asked.

"Oh, probably. And agricultural science." Jarrett took the drawing back and folded it carefully away with the letter David had sent. "Does it happen when one is twenty? Twenty-one?"

"Does what happen?" Wheaton asked.

"Does one cease to have any amusement at all and begin obsessing upon one's house?" Jarrett clarified.

Wheaton considered this for a moment before saying, "I think the word you want is 'dwelling'."

It was a moment before Jarrett understood this. Then he said dryly, "Very clever, Wheaton."

"Do not mansion it."

Mr. Jarrett gave a groan of mock pain.

"Your brother is married now. Who knows what sort of influence a wife may have upon a man?" Wheaton went on. "They want things, wives do. I have observed it. Perhaps Lady Penrith has insisted upon living at this Ravensworth of your brother's, and must have improvements. And drains."

"Oh, no--that is, they are living at Barringford at present, and there is the London townhouse for them to use, and that is as good a house as any. Besides, David has been married only a month, and he has been enthusiastic about Ravensworth for a long time."

Mr. Wheaton sighed. "If only it were haunted!"

Mr. Dauncey came into the hall at that moment, and Jarrett, though he made a point of looking elsewhere, felt his attention shift quite markedly away from Wheaton's conversation. Wheaton, for his part, looked from Jarrett to Dauncey and back, and, for once, said nothing.

When the meal was finished, and most of the boys were hurrying off to their studies or to a rare hour of leisure, Wheaton said, "I believe I shall go and...be elsewhere for a little while," he said. Jarrett, who was once again reading through his brother's letter, glanced up.

"I beg pardon? Oh. Yes. I am sorry, Wheaton. Forgive me."

"It does not signify. You are always distracted when you have a letter from your brother. I do not regard it. My feelings are not injured in the slightest."

"Wheaton?"

"Yes, Jarrett?"

"I have apologised."

"Yes, yes. I am going! Good-bye!"

Jarrett shook his head and was about to return to a close inspection of the plan-drawing when he noted that he and Dauncey were the only boys left in the dining-hall. Dauncey was turned from him, but in such a way that his not looking was as intent as if he were staring. It was instantly clear to Jarrett that Dauncey wished him to speak, or to approach.

He did both. Rising from his place at the table with a noisy scrape of his chair, he said, "I am going to visit Queen Mab. Come with me."

Dauncey looked up, his face very red. "Yes. All right," he said.

They walked across the grounds to the stables without speaking. The night was icy and clear, frost making the lawn crisp under their feet, the black sky glittering with stars. A slim crescent moon held the evening star glittering almost between its horns. Dauncey walked with his head down, clutching his ever-present Greek book to his chest. From the corner of his eye, Mr. Jarrett could see Dauncey's breath coming out in puffs of steam.

Jarrett pulled open the stable door and let Dauncey precede him inside. Very uncertain of what was happening, and aware only of a certain inexplicable pleasure he took in Dauncey's society, Jarrett closed the door again and complete darkness enfolded them.

"I cannot see a thing," Dauncey said.

Jarrett knew there was a lantern hung just inside the door, and a flint and steel to hand. He reached instead for Mr. Dauncey. His fingertips found Dauncey's face, and Dauncey drew in a sharp breath. "Wh-what are you doing, Jarrett?" Dauncey asked, his voice pitched rather high. His skin was cold under the tips of Jarrett's fingers.

Mr. Jarrett did not know the answer to this question. "Pardon me," he said. "I was looking for the lantern." He moved his hand from Dauncey's face, to his neck, to his shoulder. "You are standing directly in front of it. No--do not move. I shall find it more easily if you stay just where you are." He reached behind Dauncey, groping for the wall, noting with a sort of thrill that Dauncey did not move away. He could feel Dauncey's breath on his neck. The sharp, bitter cold of the night air diminished all along his chest as the distance between them closed and the heat from their two bodies commingled. Dauncey inhaled with a small gasp and did not exhale again. Jarrett said, "I--" but got no farther, for Dauncey's hands came up and he groped blindly at Jarrett's face, one palm finding Jarrett's mouth, the other hand gripping the side of Jarrett's neck, as if he would push Jarrett away and draw him nearer in the same movement.

Jarrett went still and opened his eyes very wide. He could just discern a glint from Dauncey's eyes, only inches away. Dauncey let his breath out in a huff and drew it in again, quick and shallow and wavering. His hand was cold against Jarrett's lips. Jarrett opened them and exhaled into Dauncey's palm. Dauncey's breathing grew faster and he made another of the small, high sounds that were little more than a break between one breath and the next. Jarrett found his own breath coming faster, his attention focused as if he were astride a galloping horse. He did not think, or consider, or reflect. He simply found Dauncey's wrist in the dark and dragged the hand away from his mouth and down.

Dauncey's head dropped forward, striking Jarrett's chin. His grip upon Jarrett's neck did not diminish. Jarrett lowered his head, seeing nothing but the blackness of the night between them, and took hold of Dauncey's neck. Their foreheads touched. "I want--" Dauncey said, his voice anguished. Jarrett pulled Dauncey's hand to the front of his breeches, hoping desperately that what Dauncey wanted was to discover the firm shape hidden there.

Indeed, for a delirious moment, Dauncey's hand explored, along with Jarrett's, the increasing dimensions of Jarrett's member, their panting breaths making the black space between them warm and humid. Then Dauncey gave a cry and pulled away. "This is wrong! You are--you should not make me--" he faltered. Jarrett's eyes, accustomed now to the very great darkness inside the stable, could just make out Dauncey's face, an oval of darkness slightly paler than its surroundings. Jarrett was aware of little other than his body's aching need to have Dauncey's hand once again upon him.

"You wanted to be here, Dauncey. I know you did." Jarrett did not wait for an answer, but reached out once more in the dark. "If you like, I will touch you, too."

The straw on the stable floor rustled as Dauncey took a step forward. Over the sound of his breathing, Jarrett could hear the exhalations of the horses in the stalls, the sound of a mane being shaken back, a soft whicker. "I think I would--" Dauncey began. His hand found Jarrett's in the darkness and Jarrett let him pull it toward his body. Jarrett did not wait for further guidance, but groped at the front of Dauncey's coat, fumbling with the buttons until he could reach the much less heavy cloth of his trousers. Jarrett had the notion that Dauncey's underlinen would be thinner still, and attempted to insert his hand there. Dauncey gave a groan. There was suddenly a chaos of cold fingers, and buttons, and cloth, as both boys attempted to give Jarrett's hand nearer access to Dauncey's eager body.

Jarrett's fingers at last settled upon the ridge of flesh pressing warmly up against Dauncey's belly under its thin covering of linen. He began to stroke, and, as this seemed to please Dauncey as much as it would have pleased him, he reasoned that a firmer contact would please Dauncey more. Dauncey gasped and shifted against Jarrett's hand. Jarrett perceived a scent, whether rising from Dauncey or from himself he could not be sure, that was as dark and as secret as this thing they were doing, as this place. Everything was overwhelming, and yet it was not enough.

In the blackness, Jarrett left off stroking Dauncey to unbutton one side of his own breeches. He could not wait longer to be touched again. He felt he must bring his flushed and demanding member into contact with something or else lose his reason. He drew it out into the cold night air of the stable, feeling the thrill of something so forbidden and yet so unseen. He groped for Dauncey's hand, and Dauncey gasped in shock when it came into contact with Jarrett's bare flesh. "You--you are..." Dauncey gasped. "I am--not--you are much bigger than I am."

As this was unarguable, and as it seemed to make Dauncey want to touch him more, Jarrett said nothing, but only pressed himself into Dauncey's questing, encircling hand. "We should touch them together." Free from any shame that might have come from seeing Dauncey in such an abandoned state and being seen by him in return, Jarrett grasped and fumbled and entangled his hands with Dauncey's in an attempt to free him from the confines of his clothes, and Jarrett felt Dauncey's long fingers close around them both, his other hand holding Jarrett's shoulder for support. Jarrett steadied himself likewise and applied his own, larger hand to the task of making Dauncey's grip firmer and more enveloping.

Unseeing, they bent their heads together, panting and thrusting, their breaths catching in their throats. Dauncey gave no voice to his feelings, only increasing the rhythm of his motion. His head was pressed into the bridge of Jarrett's nose, and his hair flicked Jarrett's cheek and eye in time with his movements. Jarrett could not contain the feelings that arose within his body, and heard himself making a new and unfamiliar sound in his throat. Suddenly, Dauncey was moving very fast, and then there was a hot wetness spilling over Jarrett's hand. Dimly recognising what had happened, and finding that this new lubrication greatly augmented the sensation he was experiencing, Jarrett closed his hand more tightly around Dauncey's, desperate not to let him loosen his grip. Everything in Jarrett's body drew in, lower and deeper. He squeezed his eyes shut, flung his head to one side, and felt his mouth go into an O. The sounds issuing from his throat rose into a silent cry, and then everything within him burst forth at such a pitch that he nearly lost his awareness.

He stood with his cheek against the top of Dauncey's head, panting, wetness cooling rapidly over his hand in the freezing night air. He gradually became aware that they were together slipping out of their combined grip. Dauncey withdrew his hand and straightened, releasing his hold upon Jarrett's shoulder. Jarrett heard him scrabble at the straw on the floor and surmised that he was wiping his hand. As Jarrett bent to do the same, the soft rustle of clothing came from where Dauncey had turned his back, and Jarrett heard something like a sob.

As Jarrett set about restoring his own clothes by feel to their buttoned state, he heard Dauncey drag in a painful breath. "You should not have let--" he began. "I am not like you."

"How are you not like me?" Jarrett asked. He could think of several answers, all true and all meaningless as they stood there, nearly invisible to each other in the stable. He did not know what to think of what they had just done, but it was very clear in his mind that they had done it together, under the equal promptings of bodily desire. Apparently Dauncey wished to make a distinction.

"I have never been expelled from a school. I do not seek--unseemly pleasures. This is not--this shall not happen, must not happen again." With this, Dauncey seemed to grope for the door, for Jarrett could hear his hand moving along the wall. Then the door came open and the air of the night outside, icier still than the deep chill within the stable, spilt in along with the light from the stars. Jarrett caught a glimpse of Dauncey's anguished face, and saw a cloud of his breath, pale and silver in the moonlight, as Dauncey turned and walked away.

Jarrett found the flint and steel, and lit the lantern. He wondered how different he and Dauncey really were, for Dauncey, though he called what had just passed between them "unseemly," also called it "pleasure." Jarrett closed the stable door against the January night and walked quietly to Queen Mab's stall.

***

For two days afterwards, Henry Dauncey so studiously avoided Jarrett that Wheaton, who had given up teasing Jarrett about his effect upon Dauncey, could not help noticing the matter anew. He seemed to sense that, whatever was now the case between Jarrett and Dauncey, it was no longer a matter for laughter, and confined himself to worried looks.

It was a week before Dauncey once again put himself in Jarrett's way, lingering after chapel one morning in the snow-covered quadrangle.

"'Nonchalant' is a lovely word, do you not agree, Jarrett?" Wheaton asked him, eyeing Dauncey. "It is French, I am fairly certain." Before Jarrett could utter a reply, Wheaton added, "I think I will wander off at this juncture. I believe that unless you speak with Dauncey now, he will expire from the sheer effort of seeming not to want you to do so."

They found themselves soon enough in a classroom that was not in use, their hands once again upon each other. This time, though the room was dim, there was enough light for Jarrett to see the flushed and livid colour of their two members; the dark hairs, thicker and more numerous than Jarrett's own, just visible through the gap in Dauncey's breeches; the glistening whiteness of the substance that issued from each of them in turn as they came hurriedly to that pinnacle of release that seemed to be the whole purpose of their wordless meeting; the look of anguished intensity upon Dauncey's face as this happened; and the fearful, cold expression that succeeded it as Dauncey reclosed his garments and left.

***

It was Candlemas when, after several such encounters, Jarrett attempted to kiss Dauncey. They were once again in the stables, this time having lighted the lantern. Tristan had the happy notion of reclining in the straw, with their college gowns for a blanket. The difference in their heights was made trivial by this means. Tristan caused Henry, who was lying on his side, to roll onto his back, and was seized by the desire to climb onto him, to surmount him and take control of him, beginning with his mouth.

Henry, apparently horrified by this, shoved Tristan roughly off him, sitting up and wiping his lips with his hand. Tristan had to tempt him back by promising not to kiss him again upon the mouth, and sitting behind him, and from that position putting his hand to Dauncey alone and working him until he lost his reticence. Then Tristan pushed him, as gently as his need would allow, face down onto the straw, kissed him on the jaw and the neck, and ground himself, unsheathed and hot and urgent, against the small of Henry's back.

***

Henry allowed Tristan to kiss him as the Easter holiday was approaching. The things they did together and never spoke of were strangely separate from the rest of Tristan's life at school. He could ride his horse, and attend to his studies, and win nearly all of his races upon the river, and never once think of Henry Dauncey in any particular way. His desultory letters to his mama and his more enthusiastic missives to David might freely mention his friend Wheaton and his younger schoolfellows, but it would not have crossed Tristan's mind to mention Dauncey in them. If Tristan found a moment of privacy in which to practice alone upon himself those motions that he and Dauncey practiced upon each other, his thoughts were not of Dauncey but, strangely, of the artist whose name he had never learnt and whom he had not seen since before Christmas.

It was the kiss, one rainy afternoon at the beginning of March, that created a bridge between Mr. Dauncey and the other parts of Mr. Jarrett's life. It happened unexpectedly. Jarrett was coming out of the ramshackle brick shed in which the sculls were stored. Dauncey was loitering outside, very evidently waiting for him, and Jarrett, seeing this, simply pulled him into the shed, gathered up handfuls of his coat, and descended upon his mouth.

Kissing awakened something in Tristan that those other, more feverish actions had not roused. For a few moments, Dauncey's mouth was soft and yielding, and kissing it was a much more languid thing than any Tristan had done with him before. A lazy heat rose up in Tristan's body, seemingly from the soles of his feet, and did not demand instant surcease, but drew out the pleasure of anticipation. When Henry belatedly pushed him away, Tristan looked at him and saw him for the first time; not just his nearly black hair, or his blue eyes, or the freckles that were scattered across his nose and cheeks, but the expression on his face, an expression of dawning comprehension and relief.

"I cannot continue this," Henry said. He said this every time they met, and Tristan generally understood Henry to be admonishing himself. This time, however, Henry was truly saying it to Tristan. "I know now that I do not truly wish--I am sorry, Jarrett. We are not the same."

He left the shed. Tristan, confused, followed him, placing a hand upon his shoulder and forcibly turning him around, pressing his back to the brick wall. Unable to believe that Henry did not find the same delight in their kiss as Tristan had found, he kissed him again. The shove with which Dauncey replied to this second overture was powerful enough to startle Tristan into stumbling back from him a step or two.

"No!" Dauncey said. "I have said that I do not wish it." He walked away and Tristan did not follow him again.


	4. Deleted Scenes: Prologue - In Which Lady Penrith Stands Her Ground

_Cambridge, December, 1815_

Lady Penrith was not known for her temerity, and did not claim any great boldness of nature, but she had travelled all the way to Cambridge to see David's brother, and the protestations of the porter of Emanuel College's lodgings that a lady could not simply wait all night in the vestibule were hardening her determination to do precisely that.

"My lady," the porter said, wringing his hands, "I beg you will reconsider. Allow me to send someone to arrange for you to stay at an inn."

Lady Penrith looked at the man, settled her fur muff more firmly upon her lap, and gave her maid Jarvis, who had risen as if to begin leaving, a single quelling glance. They remained seated on the uncomfortable bench. The porter sighed, tugged at his cuffs, and shuffled back to his small booth by the door, shaking his head and muttering to himself about impropriety.

The evening advanced and the vestibule grew very chilly. Occasionally a young gentleman of Emanuel College came in with a greeting for the porter--jaunty, haughty, or weary, according to his character. Each, when he saw a young lady sitting on the bench, looked twice and seemed nonplussed. One or two bowed, or tipped a hat to her. She made no response.

The letter secreted in the pocket of her muff was crisp against her hand. It was from the Master of Emanuel, and begged Lord Penrith's sister to influence his young lordship to a less self-destructive path, or the Master would have no choice to but solicit the interposition of the Earl of Barringford. Well, Lady Penrith had promised her late husband that she would help his brother, and she would fulfill that promise if it meant sitting in the vestibule of the students' lodging house all night long.

It nearly came to that. Lady Penrith was roused from a doze against Jarvis's shoulder by a commotion at a very late hour. She opened her eyes to see Tristan coming in; she had been afraid of not recognising him, having met him only twice in her life, but though the wild-haired boy who came through looked very bad, it was unmistakably he. His arm was wrapped tightly about the neck of another young man, and he clutched a bottle of brandy in that fist. As Lady Penrith looked on in shock, Tristan raised the bottle to mouth of his companion and made him drink, the liquor spilling from his lips as he sputtered. Tristan then replaced the bottle with his own lips, saying something extremely coarse about his intentions toward the fellow. The other young man was making to agree drunkenly with the proposed activity when Tristan noticed her.

"Charlotte!" he said without ceremony, releasing his companion. "Is that you? What are you doing here?" He halted and frowned. "Is it my mother?"

Charlotte rose. "No, brother. Lady Barringford is well."

"Well then what the devil are you doing here?"

Suddenly deeply weary and shaken to her core to see and hear the evidence of debauchery and lewdness in the young man who had inherited her husband's title, Lady Penrith stepped forward and said, "I am here to take you back to London with me, Tristan." She turned to his companion. "You will excuse us."

Tristan gasped in drunken outrage and took possession of the other young man again by grabbing hold of his arm. "You do not send my lovers away," he told Charlotte.

Her eyes fell closed with a moment's pain at hearing him speak so, but she stood her ground. "Lord Penrith," she said in clear, ringing tones that seemed to echo about the little entry-way. He paused and turned, and she pressed her small advantage. "For David's sake, you will come with me now."

Tristan seemed to become sober all at once. His hand fell from the arm of his companion as upon his face Charlotte saw one emotion succeed another: anger gave way to shock, and into that blank stare came remorse, and sorrow, and shame. For an instant, Tristan's entire visage crumpled, and Charlotte feared he would begin to weep. He did not. He drew himself up, tugged at the hem of his waistcoat, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and said, "Very well."

***

The weeping did not come until later. He came without protest to Half Moon Street, dozing and silent in the carriage with his sister-in-law. He spent two days in a kind of fevered illness, and two more sleeping. When at last he showed himself, he was pale and silent, but he had bathed, and shaved, and dressed in fresh clothes. He entered the morning room quietly and made a bow to Charlotte. She set aside her book and looked up at him.

"I am sorry," he began, but his voice broke upon the word, and he put a hand over his eyes. Charlotte waited, but he said no more, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

She rose and reached a hand up to his arm, certain of nothing but that David would have wished his brother to be comforted. "David's last wish was to see you happy," she said. "I promised him that I would help."

Tristan looked at her. "I miss him so much," he said.

She nodded, and felt hot tears springing to her eyes. "So do I," she cried. "Oh dear heavens, so do I!"

To her astonishment, Tristan's long arms came about her and he drew her into an embrace. He was so tall that she did not come to his collarbone. She felt his cheek against the top of her head, and felt the silent quaking of his sobs in counterpoint to her own.

How long they stood so in the middle of the library, she could not have said; perhaps no more than a moment or two, but when they drew apart, there was an understanding between them that many hours' conversation could not have created so well.


	5. Deleted Scenes: Part II, After the Brawl in the Rose & Crown

(this scene takes place the day following the brawl in the Rose and Crown, and several days before Signorina Moretti's concert)

_London, May, 1818_

"Cooper, what is this?" his lordship demanded, eyeing the dressing-gown that his valet had brought out for him to put on following his shave. It was new and sumptuous, and Penrith had bespoken it with some hopeful idea of its being seen by someone other than his valet in the near future, but it was hardly what he wished to put on this morning. "I do not intend to lounge about all day!"

"Mr Stockleigh has said that your lordship ought to remain within doors today," Cooper replied, rather more primly than usual, which meant that Penrith had hurt his feelings.

Penrith's mouth was sour and his head rather woolly from the laudanum he had been given to ease his pain in the night. The ache all through his hand and wrist was bearable this morning without it, but he was not himself. "My physician is a clucking hen!" Penrith declared, and barely restrained himself from admonishing his valet not to be the same. "I have damaged my finger, not my skull. I am going out."

"Very good, my lord. I shall inform Mr Stephens that you wish the carriage."

"Dash it all, Cooper! I do not wish the carriage. I shall ride." It was a stupid thing to say, and Lord Penrith knew it: he could not hold the reins properly with his fingers splinted together. "Oh, never mind. But I have no desire to wait for the carriage. I shall just walk. I am only going to Bruton Street. It will clear my head."

"Very good, my lord."

Penrith descended from his private rooms some little time later, dressed to go out. Cooper had had an idea of sending for the glover to get a glove purpose-made to go over his third and last fingers together with their splint, and, meeting resistance from his lordship on this point, had suggested cutting the last two fingers from an existing pair--anything to prevent his lordship's going out in a state less than completely dressed--at which point Penrith had been obliged to tell him not to be ridiculous.

Lord Penrith escaped the solicitude of his servants and set out in the brilliant sunshine--wearing only his left-hand glove--toward Acklebury's studio. If Acklebury were not painting this morning, Penrith determined that he would continue to Upper Berkeley Street. He had sent his footman thither in the evening with a note of thanks for Acklebury's help in conveying him home, painstakingly and very badly written with his left hand, and the absence of a prompt and amused reply this morning suggested to Penrith that Acklebury required a call, and perhaps some bracing words upon the subject of ignoring baseless taunts.

By the time he rapped upon the door of the studio, his head was well cleared of the traces of last night's medicine, but the pain in his broken finger was rather sharper than he had anticipated. From within, there came the sound of footsteps, and Acklebury's quiet voice, and it occurred to Penrith for the first time that Acklebury might have another commission in hand; he had not thought to ask.

Indeed, as soon as Marchbanks opened the door, Penrith saw that his coming was ill-judged, for in the middle of the room, in what he had grown, quite foolishly, to think of as his own armchair, sat a finely dressed young gentleman whom Penrith recognised as Mr Percy Lankford, Lizzie Danforth's younger brother. Acklebury was at his easel. Both looked at Penrith in surprise, and Acklebury's expression said clearly that the surprise was not altogether an agreeable one. The bruise on his cheek was larger and more colourful today than it had been yesterday.

"I beg your pardon," Penrith managed, from the threshold which Marchbanks had not ushered him past. "I seem to have mistaken the hour." It was the worst sort of excuse, both false and feeble, and Penrith felt exceedingly foolish uttering it, but it was the only thing that came to mind.

It was impossible not to remark the fresh, ruddy bloom of youth on Percy's cheeks, or the almost unseemly abundance of his dark curls. From the petulant boy that Penrith had last met on a visit to Barringford three years earlier, Percy had grown to be a tall, lightly-built, handsome young man of about eighteen. He did not rise, perhaps from a wish not to disturb his languid pose, which Penrith could not but think very affected, or perhaps from the sense that courtesy was not required toward childhood neighbours. "Oh, Penrith," the boy said airily. "Lizzie has insisted that I get a portrait like yours."

"I did not know you were down from Cambridge," Penrith replied, coming into the room as Marchbanks stepped aside at last. Acklebury stood patiently at his easel, as if to say that he had nothing better to do than to wait upon the convenience of his great and noble patrons. Such subservience angered Penrith, and, without waiting for Percy's reply, he said, "Will you pardon us for just a moment, Percy? I require a word with Mr Acklebury."

Acklebury's eyebrows rose, but he neither spoke nor moved, leaving Penrith to find something to say that could be said before Lizzie's little brother, who was looking on in boredom. "Well, get on with it, Penrith," Percy said.

Penrith cast the boy what he hoped was a quelling look, then turned to Acklebury and said, "Will you do me the honour of waiting on me? At your convenience, of course."

Acklebury did not immediately reply. His eyes, wide with some combination of misery and shock that Penrith was not able to interpret, flicked to Penrith's ungloved and bandaged hand for an instant, and he said, "Is it broken?"

"So it seems."

"I am very sorry." His tone suggested that he meant it not as sympathy but as apology, and Penrith found his ire rising. The presence of young Lankford in the room prevented his replying as he would have liked, telling John not to be absurd, that his propensity to take blame where he had no fault was very nearly a form of vanity with him; and so he only bowed slightly and said, "It is no matter. May I expect to see you?"

Acklebury nodded, still evidently miserable. "I shall call later today, if it is not inconvenient."

"Good. Forgive my intrusion." He turned. "Percy. My regards to your parents when you write to them."

He turned and left the studio, sensible of a pang of regret at its being no longer the private meeting place it had come to be in his imagination, and trying to assure himself that Percy Lankford was far too young and foolish to be of any but artistic interest to Acklebury.

Penrith was torn between a desire for society and a wish to assuage the growing pain which his broken finger was causing him. Discomfort, and the intemperate nature of the thoughts it was giving rise to, made him choose to return home. By the time he arrived back at Half Moon Street, he was of a mind to write to Lizzie and ask her what the devil she had been thinking, sending her insolent little brother to take up Mr Acklebury's time. His old friend was spared such an ill-judged missive only by the splint on his hand that made writing nearly impossible.

Stephens proffered a tray bearing three calling-cards, more than Lord Penrith was accustomed to see. A quick perusal told him that Lizzie and Gilbert had both called during the brief space of his absence, and, to his displeasure, so had Westhill. Word of yesterday's public-house brawl must surely be circulating. He was glad that he had gone out and saved himself the trouble of quelling rumour. "I am not at home to visitors," he told Stephens. "I expect Mr Acklebury later. I will see him."

Penrith slumped into a chair in his library, bored, restless, and out of spirits. "Leave me," he snapped to a housemaid who had the misfortune to be doing whatever housemaids did, in a room where his lordship was not expected to be. She ran away with a squeak and a curtsy--Penrith thought her name was Sally, or Polly, or perhaps Molly--and he regretted his tone instantly, for it reminded him of his father.

He picked up a book and set it down again. He paced about the room and even considered going upstairs to lie down, thinking that a nap might at least help to pass the time. It was really too bad of Acklebury to be otherwise occupied today. He could, he supposed, go back out, but the near-certainty of being called upon to confirm or deny rumours, to explain or describe the circumstances that had resulted in his right hand being broken, made him keep to his library. Where the devil was Acklebury? And what the devil had been wrong with him earlier?

By the time Stephens tapped at the library door and announced "Mr Acklebury, my lord," Penrith was nearly beside himself with restlessness and dull pain. He leapt from his chair.

"I have come as you requested, my lord," Acklebury said with a bow.

Penrith repressed the urge to shake him, but could not prevent himself from saying, "Good God, John! What is the matter with you today?"

"I beg your pardon, my lord?" Acklebury looked offended, as well he might, Penrith supposed, and his effort at cold hauteur was not entirely unsuccessful, contrary as such expression was to his nature.

"You are not yourself," Penrith said.

A flash of something--anger, perhaps--showed in Acklebury's expression and he said, in more heat than Penrith had ever heard from him, "It is possible that you do not know me well enough to judge." Almost as quickly as the words were out, Acklebury's eyes widened as if in shock at them, but he made no attempt to retract them, and Penrith was pleased to see some evidence of spirit in the man.

"It is not for want of trying," Penrith pointed out. Acklebury looked stricken at this, and there followed a long, tense silence while Penrith considered what to say next, for it seemed clear that Acklebury was in one of his wordless moods. "I have spoken without thinking," he said. He raised his right hand to his chest, in which position it throbbed a little less, and said, "Forgive me. I am in pain."

Acklebury looked away, and Penrith feared he was going to apologise again for--well, for whatever it was he had apologised for earlier. Acklebury's mouth twitched, however, and Penrith perceived that he was trying very hard not to laugh. He lost the struggle, and gave in to a moment's silent hilarity, his shoulders shaking with it. His whole face was transformed by this humorous turn, his eyes creasing and a broad, almost helpless grin revealing his teeth. Penrith was transfixed.

"You are a great baby," Acklebury said. "'I am in pain.'" He laughed again, and Penrith, though affronted, could not help laughing with him.

"Well, I am!" he protested.

Acklebury's laughter subsided. "I beg your pardon, Penrith. Are you truly in much pain? What was broken, precisely?"

"I shall never confess to a moment's hurt again when you are in the room," Penrith replied. "But since you ask, it is just here--" he held his right hand in his left and indicated the outermost bone of it.

Acklebury looked and nodded. "How long must your fingers be bound up like that?"

"Mr Stockleigh says a fortnight or longer. Boredom, I am afraid, will be the worst of my fate, for I cannot ride, or drive, or even write properly. I can feed myself, but only just." He heard his own voice becoming petulant again and quickly said, "But what of you? That bruise on your face looks rather uncomfortable."

"Oh, it is not too bad. I suffer mostly in my vanity. I do not think this shade of purple becomes me. Marchbanks assures me that it will be much more flattering shade of olive in the next day or two, and I take heart from this."

Acklebury's eye was very green by contrast to the bruise, but Penrith thought it best not to voice this observation. He took a chair, and Acklebury did likewise. "Well, I am glad it was not worse. It is unchristian of me, but I can only hope that Townsend's knuckles pain him as much as your cheekbone pains you!"

Acklebury coloured at this and his jaw clenched, but he nodded.

"And that he has a loose tooth, at least, to remind him that he would do better to learn some manners," Penrith went on, warming to his subject. "I believe a broken finger is not too high a price to pay if it teaches such an insolent person the power of remaining silent. And as to his friends! What man worthy of the name would agree to support a fellow like Townsend on an errand against the likes of you and me? He knew already that you are the better fighter! I was never so astonished in my life--" Penrith paused, noticing that Acklebury did not appear to share his relish in abusing their foolish detractors. "What is it?" he asked. "Oh! Perhaps you are having difficulty reconciling having struck a fellow in anger. Well, I do not advocate violence as a way of life--I hope you know that I do not!--and it is true that we might have avoided coming to blows with them, but by God, Townsend's insolence was intolerable!"

Acklebury looked more miserable with each word that Penrith spoke. "If you don't mind, Penrith," he said when Penrith stopped himself from speaking more, "I should prefer to speak of other things."

"Of course," Penrith replied at once, not well understanding Acklebury's discomfort, but having no wish to prolong it.

"Thank you." John rose, buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, adjusted its cuffs, took a step or two away from his chair and back again, and, in short, gave every appearance of agitation.

Penrith watched him for a moment, thinking. "I will say only one thing more on the subject. You did not go to public school." John turned to him with a wary expression. "If you had, the little play we enacted at the Rose and Crown yesterday would have been familiar to you."

"Please! Do not reproach me with what sets me apart!" were John's surprising next words.

"It is no reproach," Penrith said, taken aback by his vehemence. "The bully is a fixture of school life that you were mercifully spared, and so I think it must have been more shocking for you to encounter it, but that is all it was, John." John turned his face away at this use of his Christian name, and Penrith considered that perhaps he had made too free with it, but he could not think of that just now. "Forgive me, Acklebury. It is clear that you and I view the matter differently, for you have taken it very much to heart, where I have not. I do not like to see you so distressed, and I should like to understand better, that is all." A glance at John's face showed him that his words were only making matters worse. "I will say no more about it just now. Let us go out of doors. I propose a walk. I am exceedingly restless. Come with me to the park."

"Are you sure you are well enough?" Acklebury asked.

"I shall be perfectly well so long as I hold my hand up."

"Perhaps you could do as Bonaparte did and put your hand into your waistcoat. I cannot see one of those engravings of him without thinking that he is scratching his belly."

Penrith laughed and put his hand between the buttons of his waistcoat, hoping that it would make Acklebury laugh at once more, for being made sport of was better than causing distress, and he had a wish to see that grin.

His effort was rewarded, for Acklebury did smile, and say, "I believe you are a foot taller than Bonaparte. Could Cooper not fashion a sling for you?"

"Cooper would make Weston come and tailor one to match each of my coats. Come, let us leave before my servants can cluck over me any more than they have already done today!"

Together they quit the townhouse and went in the direction of the Green Park. Acklebury made a point of moving to Penrith's left, saying, "I should not like to run against you and cause you pain," and the idea that he might walk close enough to do so pleased Penrith enough that he nearly forgot the ache of his broken finger.

They availed themselves of a break in the busy traffic to cross Picadilly, and Penrith thought that perhaps Acklebury was approaching of his own volition the subject that had distressed him only a short time before, but, when they had entered the tree-lined and relatively quiet lane of the park and Acklebury remained silent, Penrith ventured to say, "I have sometimes thought it would be great sport to get a cartoon by Cruikshank, but his likeness of you was so very poor that I do not think I fancy the idea any more." He watched Acklebury's face as best he might while walking by his side, and could not tell if his words had done any good.

After a time, Acklebury said, "I confess, it made me feel rather exposed."

Penrith began to perceive the cause of Acklebury's discomfiture. "It is odd," he said, "for nothing could hide you better than Cruikshank's caricature. It conveyed a foolish, light-minded fop, and you are none of those things."

Acklebury cast him a brief, grateful look. "He made me look...womanly."

"You support my case, Acklebury. You are nothing of the kind, and no one who has met you could think so." Penrith thought his words must be cheering Acklebury a little, and he added, "However, one cannot help being very handsome. It is burdensome."

Acklebury looked at him sideways and shook his head, but he smiled as he did so, and looked much more himself.

"I beg that you will think no more about yesterday," Penrith ventured. "You are better than than those who would draw tasteless caricatures of you, and those who--who would speak ill of you."

John did not reply for a long moment. They walked in the shade of the trees, and Penrith began to be sensible of the throbbing pain of his hand. Finally, Acklebury said, so quietly that Penrith almost did not hear it, "Thank you, Penrith."


	6. Deleted Scenes: Part III - One of John and Tristan's first mornings together

A short time later, Tristan, dressed in fresh clothes, entered the little dining-parlour. Thwarted in his desire to spend a pleasant and private morning hour in John's company, he must settle for that vastly inferior satisfaction, a hearty breakfast. He was serving himself two or three kippers when John entered the room.

"You are abroad early," Tristan said. John looked remarkably well, he thought. There was a degree of brightness in his eye, a notable ease in his movements, that Tristan had not seen there before. One thing had not changed, however: upon seeing him, John's face was immediately overspread with a rosy flush.

"I could find no reason to lie abed," John said quietly, moving to the sideboard and taking a plate. "The household was up and going about its business."

"Yes," Tristan acknowledged. Under cover of reaching for the coffee-pot, he bent close to John and said, "I am sorry. I could not prevent it."

"So I surmised," John replied. "It does not signify."

***

They rode together again that day, this time into the village of Crosby-Ravensworth. Tristan watched John--covertly, he hoped--dreading the word from John's lips that would signal his intention to make his escape. John, however, rode alongside him in a companionable quiet, smiling lightly enough when he chanced to catch Tristan observing him. He gave every appearance of a man content with his life. They had ridden about half the distance into the village when John finally spoke.

"I have been thinking about the problem that lies before us," he said, and Tristan tensed so suddenly that Jupiter perceived it and shook his head. Tristan tried to school his face into neutral attentiveness, and waited for John to continue.

"I believe--that is, if we are to continue on the--" John paused, and Tristan risked a glance in his direction. John's eyes were cast down, and he had taken his lower lip between his teeth in a manner so unconscious and so expressive of uncertainty that Tristan grew still more tense.

"What I wish to say," John went on in a rush, "is that if we are to go on as we--as we have begun these past evenings--" here John's face became rosy--"then we must give some further thought to discretion. In a word, to concealment."

Tristan reined his horse to a halt. "If?" he said, in some incredulity, turning to look at John.

John became still more flustered. "I only meant--that is, I must not presume that you wish to--" He drew his own horse to a stop.

"What? You think I wish you to go? You think me so--so profligate as that? John! I did not invite you here for a seduction, with the idea of tiring of you in a day!" Tristan was genuinely amazed at John's words.

John's eyed widened. "I have spoken carelessly. I do not think you profligate, Penrith. You know I do not. It is only that--well, the other evening I said that I did not come here lightly and that I would not lightly leave. I have thought about it, and I wanted you to know that when I said it, I did not mean that I would cause difficulties for you if you want me to go, for I will not."

Tristan could scarcely believe his ears. "Good God, John!" he cried. "What in the world might have caused you to imagine that I wish you to go?"

"Nothing at all," John said, "But neither do I know that you truly wish me to stay." He looked away briefly and then back with a hint of a smile. "Of course, it is true that three times last night you made it clear that you wished me--not to go."

"And a fourth this morning, had not that infernal Watson caught me just as I was returning to you!" Tristan muttered. "I beg your pardon if I have not been plain with you. It is odd, for no-one would accuse me of being a man of few words."

Encouraged by the small chuckle that issued from John's throat at this, Tristan went on. "You have implied that I know more of these things than you do, that you depend upon my guidance. Well, do not imagine my past to be more colourful than it is, John. It is but the matter of a fortnight for you to learn all that I ever learnt in another man's bed."

John's face reddened farther, though not, Tristan thought, in displeasure, at the prospect of such a fortnight's instruction pleased him very much.

"I, on the other hand, would require a lifetime to learn what you know of kindness and goodness and openness," Tristan went on. "I supposed that in coming to you these last nights as I have, I was being very open, and making myself very plain. Let me be plainer now: I wish you to stay. I am glad that you are here."

John said nothing, but only inclined his head and looked over at Tristan with a boyish grin.

"So let us continue to speak plainly to one another, as plainly as we may, when we are private," Tristan said, indicating with a tilt of his head the village that lay before them. "We will not be private very much. That, I am afraid, is the unavoidable fact of our situation."

They began moving again, their horses walking sedately and pleasantly toward the first houses of Crosby-Ravensworth.

"I am beginning to understand the difficulties we face," John said. "And that is why I wanted to speak of the matter of discretion while we are out of doors, and may talk of things that no one else must hear."

Tristan found himself lowering his voice, though there was no one to hear him. "If discretion does not mean staying away from you altogether," he said, "and it cannot mean that, for I cannot live with that, then it means that dawn and the servants must find us always in our own beds."

"It means that and more," John agreed sombrely. "It means that I must call you Penrith and you must call me Acklebury, without fail, when others may hear us. I must not look at you the way I wish to. I must restrain my impulse to touch you. That, I have rehearsed well in recent months, for the impulse to touch you has tormented me for a while now."

"When did it first come upon you?" Tristan asked, curious.

"That rainy day in Hyde Park."

Tristan, exceedingly pleased, said, "I am afraid that I was very importunate that day. I made you undress."

"I was perfectly capable of refusing."

Tristan considered this. "So! You wished me to see you in your skin."

"I do not know precisely what I wished on that day," John said seriously. "I can only say now that I clearly did not wish to refuse you."

"I am very happy that you did not. The glimpse that you permitted me then has had to serve me for months."

John's face slowly revealed his comprehension of Tristan's meaning, and he looked for a moment as if he might expire from the heat that rose to his cheeks. "I am before you, though," Tristan went on in pleased amusement, "for I first conceived a desire to touch you when I was sixteen years old and you were drawing people's faces in the cathedral close at Winchester."

John's expression changed to one of purest incredulity. He gave an uncertain half-laugh. "Not really--"

"I assure you, John, I would not bend the truth in such an important matter, not even to flatter you into coming to my bed."

"Well. That is most...surprising," John said. "You were aware, then, even at that age, that you--?"

"That I was not as interested as I ought to have been in the society of women? Yes, I think I was."

John did not reply for a long moment. The lane they had been following opened into the road that served the village of Crosby-Ravensworth. The neat slate roofs and the Norman church tower made a pleasing array against the backdrop of green hills and the midday summer sky. "I do not think I can go back to not knowing," John said at last.

"No. It is impossible." Tristan glanced again at him and was not surprised to see some regret in his expression. He remembered something John had said in one of his letters, and ventured to say, "One's family...wishes otherwise."

John looked at him sharply.

"My brother, in the last conversation we ever had, made me promise that if I could not change, I must be seen to have changed."

"I am sorry."

"As was I, for a very long time. I could have wished for a pleasanter conversation to be our last."

"Do you...do you wish to be otherwise?" John asked him.

"Sometimes. I tire of the secrecy. I tire of the Miss Laretons who cannot conceive of the truth of what I am and must be protected from it as from a monster. That is why I like Lizzie Danforth so well."

"Does she know--?"

"Oh, I think she has a pretty good idea."

"You astonish me. And yet she seems to put Miss Lareton before you quite as if--well..."

Penrith sighed. "She puts Miss Lareton before me quite as if I could make her a Countess and give her a great deal of jewellery."

"Yes," John said. "She said something of the kind to me. I found it rather--"

"Mercenary?" Tristan supplied.

"Yes, I suppose that is it."

"I make note of this new information about you, John!" Tristan said.

"What information is that?"

"You are a sentimentalist!"

"I am nothing of the kind!"

"Oh, but you are, John. It is all very clear to me now." Indeed, Tristan thought, more than John's courtesy arose from his kind and open heart: that heart inclined him to be easily wounded. Tristan reminded himself that he ought to be more careful of it, and of those sentiments, than he would ordinarily be in circumstances of such very advanced intimacy as new existed between them. "You are concerned for Miss Lareton's feelings, and it is greatly to your credit."

"I am afraid I was selfishly thinking only of my own feelings just now," John replied, looking over at him with a most earnest expression. "I did not like to hear of Mrs Danforth's matchmaking where you are concerned. Forgive me: it is foolish beyond anything."

Tristan glanced away, uncertain of what response to make. After a moment, he said, "I suppose it is a little foolish to wish for what may not be. I have been guilty of it myself." When he looked again at John, he was smiling one of his small half-smiles, and Tristan deemed that he must have said what pleased him. "For example," he went on, "I wish that we might freely enjoy one another's company without any need of the concealment you were wise enough to bring up a moment ago."

John nodded.

"The little indiscretions that we committed earlier, when we could look anyone in the eye and say that nothing existed between us that might not exist between any two gentlemen, did not go unremarked, you know."

"I know."

"Now that we may not say any such thing except by lying, we must be far more careful to give no-one cause to ask the question."

"So, if I understand you clearly," John replied as they passed the first houses of the village, "I may not kiss you in the village square."

"Certainly not."

John lowered his voice. "Nor push you up against the wall of Farmer Elicott's barn?"

"Not unless I have done something to deserve it."

"So, I must not hope to pull you down with me into the rather overgrown grass of the French garden outside your drawing-room windows?"

"No!" Tristan hissed out of the side of his mouth. He nodded politely to a village woman who had paused in her labours to make Lord Penrith a small courtesy.

"Very well," John said in a more normal voice. "I think I understand you perfectly, my lord." He lowered it again to add, "I must, then, abandon my plan to give you your way with me up on that hill?"

Penrith nodded again, this time to a village man who touched his cap as they passed by. Scarcely moving his lips, he murmured, "Oh, I have not yet begun to have my way with you, wretch."

"I felt sure that you had. Have I misperceived matters?" John persisted.

Tristan, by an effort of will, prevented himself from emitting a frustrated groan. "It is a figure of speech, John. Are you trying to drive me to distraction?"

For answer, John clicked and urged his horse forward, into the village and toward its fine Norman church, making any further pursuit of this interesting subject quite impossible.


	7. Deleted Scenes: Chapter 27: The Content of the Private Conversation between Charlotte and Tristan

When John had left the room, Charlotte said, "Mr Acklebury is an amiable enough gentleman, but I confess myself rather surprised to find him so much at home here."

Tristan frowned. "Indeed?"

"I supposed that, after all the trouble he has caused you, he would scarcely have the effrontery to run so tame in the house."

Tristan stared at her. "I do not understand you, Charlotte. Acklebury causes me no trouble. He is my dearest friend."

"Perhaps you do not consider the sum of money you have already agreed to pay out on his behalf to be trouble, but if you do not, you ought to."

"He does not know of that." Tristan said.

Charlotte's eyes grew wide. "Good heavens, Tristan. How is this possible?"

"It is very simple, Charlotte: I did not tell him." Without waiting for the question that he knew must come next, he went on, "Well, what good would it have done? I have tried a thousand ways in my mind to broach the subject with him, and each ends the same way. He takes full responsibility, he bankrupts himself in some honourable attempt to repay me, and if he can be talked out of that disastrous course, he is consumed with guilt and remorse and cannot bear to see me, or fears that I cannot bear to see him."

"I wonder that you can," was her disconcerting reply.

Tristan stared at her, his shock at this statement robbing him of words for a moment. He was well aware that Charlotte did not fully understand and could not accept what John was to him, but he had not expected her to be so callous. She looked back at him openly, showing none of the discomfort of one who has knowingly caused offence. "He is my friend," he replied at last, his tone as neutral as he could make it.

"You have been known to have ruinous friends before, my dear. I thought you were cured of that tendency. Indeed, I had dared to hope that your wish to be useful to the Foreign Minister, to place yourself under my brother's influence--well, after reading your letter, I expected to learn that you intended to end your friendship with Mr Acklebury."

Tristan was suddenly tired, weary to his core. He rose and walked to the fireplace, giving himself a moment in which to quell the unkind, angry words that sprang first into his mind regarding her dull and rigidly upright elder brother Reginald, who was a dry stick at the age of thirty-two, and whose influence, therefore, was something to be overcome as soon as cultivated.

He turned and looked down at Charlotte. "I spend a good deal of effort every day trying to appear as the world wishes me to be--as David would have wished me to be, and therefore as I think you would approve of. You rescued me from my own worst weakness, and out of gratitude, I have tried never to expose you unduly to--to what I cannot change in myself. I am cured of my tendency to debauchery, and I shall be forever grateful to you for that, but I am not changed in my nature. John is not one of my ruinous old friends. I shall not distress you with particulars, but it is time you understood that he is very dear to me."

Charlotte paled, then coloured, very rapidly, and he knew that what he hinted at was oversetting to her. She rose and drew a shaking breath. "All I have ever asked of you is gentlemanly behaviour."

"You seem to think that for me, unlike for another gentleman, that means an entire self-denial."

Charlotte turned away from him quickly, her handkerchief in her hands. When she whirled around again to face him, it was gripped in one fist. She flung her hands down to her sides and held her arms there stiffly. "What do you think I have been doing these six years since my husband died?" she cried. "Do you think I feel nothing--want nothing? Do you think I have not longed for the comfort of a lover's embrace? Perhaps you think that ladies do not feel such things! Well, I assure you, brother, we do. But for me there can be no dalliance, no discreet affair, and no visits to some--some disreputable house! Do not speak to me of self-denial."

Tristan felt stunned by this frank exposition, and required a moment to recover the thread of the argument. He said, "It is true that women do not enjoy the same freedoms as men, and I really do not wish to match tales of woe with you. I cannot know what your life has been. I do not think I have said anything that makes light of your difficulties. Indeed, I did not believe that we were speaking of them. I wish only to make it clear to you, Charlotte, as my friend, that while you may remarry and soon know again those comforts that you speak of, I may never do so."

"What? Of course you can marry, Tristan."

He looked into her face, trying to see some sign that she understood what she was saying. She regarded him, her brow furrowed, incomprehension clear in her eyes.

"I cannot marry for love," he said.

She raised her shoulders slightly, as if she would shrug this away, and Tristan was not astonished to hear her next words. "Many perfectly satisfactory, happy marriages have begun with respect--"

"Charlotte. Stop. I beg you." He took her clenched hands in his. "Stop. Listen to me. You must hear--I must be heard. For once, I must be heard."

She nodded. Her eyes were wide and wary, and Tristan felt sure that she knew something of what he was about to say.

"Come, sit back down." When they had both taken their chairs again, Tristan said, "When you took me away from Cambridge, you told me that David had made known to you the facts about me--about what I am."

She sat very straight in her chair and looked down at the handkerchief that was still bunched in one hand. She did not speak, so Tristan went on.

"Perhaps he told you that he hoped I would outgrow my tendencies. He said as much to me that night, before he died. Believe me, Charlotte, when I tell you that my desire to gratify him in his last wish was very strong. But it is not in my power. You know that I am not light-minded. You saw me turn from all of my 'ruinous' friends, and from the habits of excess that I fell into after David's death. You saw me put my life to rights. You have seen me take up my title, and my responsibilities. I think I have shown you and the world that I am not without strength of will."

"No, Tristan, of course you are not! But--"

Tristan held up a hand. "Please, Charlotte. Let me finish. I have no wish to shock you or distress you, but I must ask you to understand in terms as plain as I can make them: I am not inclined to the society of women. I do not feel about them--about any of them--as David felt about you, or as Caine appears to do. I am four-and-twenty years old. For at least eight years, I have been offered opportunities to--" he paused. How on earth was he to make his meaning clear? "--to discover my natural preferences. Indeed, my station and my wealth, and, frankly, my appearance, have made a veritable cornucopia of choices available to me. I do not say this boastfully! Much of what has been put before me in my life has been shocking and distasteful."

Charlotte gave him a horrified look.

"I tell you all of this to convince you that I know my nature. You may call it unnatural; I will not argue the point with you. It is what I am. I do not call John my friend only because we enjoy a sparring bout together, or a conversation, or a ride in the park--though all those things are true, and his society is a delight to me. I call him my friend because the world does not permit me another word." He reached across the space separating their two chairs and coaxed her hands back into his. He ducked his head and tried see her downcast eyes. When at last she glanced at him again, he said, "I love him."

With a small, spasmodic movement, she tried to draw her hands away, but Tristan held them for a moment longer. He supposed she must feel very shocked. "Try to believe me, Charlotte. I am not a child, or subject to childish fancies--at least, I do not think I am. I am happy with John. He is happy with me. He is not some depraved person who has led me astray. He did not tempt me into sin. If anything, it was the reverse, but we have established that our eyes are open and neither of us is deceived." He gave her hands a gentle shake. "Can you find it in your heart to accept that I am telling you the truth?"

Still she did not look up. In a small voice, she said, "I do not know, Tristan. Please, do not ask me to hear more tonight. It is--I knew that you--I saw you at Cambridge. I have known almost from the day we first met that you have sometimes sought--sought pleasure from other young men. I cannot condone it. I cannot accept it!" She met his eyes again at last, and he saw no anger there, only a great confusion. "Have you truly expended every effort to--to change?"

"Yes." He did not suppose her capable of imagining the price that a young man might pay during three years of rehabilitation, no matter what she said about the want of comfort in her own life. "I do not propose to tell you what those efforts have consisted of. You must accept my word."

She drew her hands from Tristan's and still did not look at him. There was another long silence, while Tristan waited, half fearful and half tired, for her to turn from him. Finally, in a small voice, she said, "What will you do?" She looked up. "How will you live?"

"I am living already," he pointed out. He wished that her comprehension might have been fuller, sooner. He wished that she might have understood, and accepted, all that he had to tell her with an open heart; but that she had not dissolved into tears, or fainted away in shock at it, he reminded himself, must still be proof of the spirit he had always admired in her.

"But what of the title? What of the estates?"

"Family lines have ended before, Charlotte. It will be no great tragedy to anyone when the Barringford title eventually passes to some cousin of my father's."

At this, she stared at him for a long moment, her eyes scanning his features so intently that he was sure she must know the other, still greater secret of his life, but she only blinked once or twice and said, "Yes. Yes of course. Still, it is in your power to prevent it." There was a questioning note in her voice, and Tristan realised with a slight shock what she must be asking.

"You want to know whether it is in my power to do what would be necessary to get a child?" He could not prevent a nervous, huffing little laugh from escaping him. He rose again, trying to see a clear path through the many uncomfortable feelings this unexpected conversation was giving rise to. He took a pace away, turned, and came back. Moderating the rather wild tone his voice wanted to take, he said, "You have seen me at my worst. It would not be too much to claim that you saved my life, but that does not entitle you to ask such a question, and I do not propose to answer it."

Charlotte's face was very red and she gaped. "I--no!"

Tristan disregarded this protest and went on. "Need I point out that whatever the answer to your unspoken question, it is decidedly not in my power to ensure that the child would be a boy? I say again, Charlotte: family lines have ended before. Mine will not be the first, and it will not be the last." He reflected on the strange injustice by which three young, apparently fatherless men in the region of Barringford had been educated and set up in respectable positions, each of them bearing a good deal more resemblance to the Earl of Barringford than he did, and none of whom would ever have his wealth and privilege. In the gentlest tones he could contrive, he added, "And really, Charlotte, it ought not matter to you. You will soon leave this family."

She was again silent for a long moment. Little by little, the nervous motion of her hands stilled, and when at last she raised her face to Tristan, she appeared calmer. "I spent three months as your brother's wife. I did not believe I would ever remarry--certainly, your father repeated to me often enough that it was not possible for me to do so without dishonouring the family. Well, I told myself that the memory of those three months' happiness must do for me what a real and full life does for other women--that I must make them last, like a tiny inheritance. I shall forever revere David, but Tristan, I scarcely remember him! I remember his warmth, his embraces...sometimes I remember his voice, and I still see his face sometimes in Lord Barringford's, but it is a year or more since I have been able to derive any sustenance from my small memories of him. They are quite worn out. I am sorry, Tristan."

Tristan found that her words did not cause him any real sorrow. "I, too, have ceased to mourn him," he told her gently. "It is what we are meant to do. You do not owe me an apology for it."

"I have only just realised that my anxiety for your title has been nothing more than my own clinging to a memory--to a duty that has expired. It ought to have expired sooner. You are quite right, Tristan. I wish to remarry, and if I am so fortunate as to do so, I shall be leaving your family. What becomes of the title, of the Jarrett name, would truly then concern me no longer." She gave him a faint, watery smile and dabbed at her eyes. "I am sorry, my dear. You know that I love you as my own brother--I hope you know it!--and I wish for your happiness. I cannot help wishing that you will discover..." She broke off, looking away.

"The woman who will make me mend my ways?" Tristan prompted. She nodded and shrugged her shoulders in a sheepish fashion. "I have met her in you, Charlotte. You really must not expect more." He took her hands again and made her look at him. "Truly, I thought that you understood all of this."

"I suppose I did," she replied very quietly. "I only hoped--well, it does not matter." She rose and turned aside to dab at her eyes again, then she put her handkerchief away, squared her shoulders, and faced him. "I cannot view with complacency what you have made clear to me. My mind is not so easily altered upon so serious a point. I do not know that I can ever accept it, but I do love you, and admire all else that you have become, and so I shall undertake to believe you and to respect your--your friendship with Mr Acklebury. I will keep your secret, Tristan. That much, I can promise you."

"My secret," Tristan repeated bitterly. "Yes, by all means, let us reduce me to that."

With an expression of love and sorrow, Charlotte said, "Forgive me, brother. It is the best I can do."


End file.
